


just off the key of reason

by moodmaker



Category: Stray Kids (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, M/M, Prom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-16
Updated: 2019-07-16
Packaged: 2020-06-29 19:04:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19836601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moodmaker/pseuds/moodmaker
Summary: It’s not that there’s anything wrong with Seungmin asking someone to prom, it’s just—Seungmin? Student council president for three years in a row Seungmin? Cried when he scratched his parent’s car backing out of the driveway Seungmin? Taught Hyunjin how to tie his shoes in kindergarten and subsequently became his best friend Seungmin? Would rather spend his evenings meticulously planning out future bullet journal spreads than attend any sort of school function Seungmin? Has been ditching prom with Hyunjin for the past three years Seungmin? That Seungmin?Jisung tilts his head to the side. “I wonder who it is.”“Well,” Hyunjin declares. “Wonder no more. I’m,” he taps his chin for emphasis, “going to get to the bottom of this.”





	just off the key of reason

**Author's Note:**

> thank you to d, for answering all of my dumb questions, and thank you/sorry to the mods, for organizing this event/my inability to write without pressure!
> 
> written for + title taken from hum hallelujah by fall out boy

As Hyunjin’s mom likes to remind him via passive-aggressively texted Ted Talk links, the world is spiraling into ruin—not from climate change, but technology.

(“It’s threatening our future as a species,” she seethes over dinner one day. “Kids these days are but a barren husk of their former selves, staring mindlessly at the blue-lighted drugs of their generation. We live in a cruel, godless world—Hyunjin, are you on your phone at the dinner table?”)

As a member of Gen Z/iGen/the Millennials (what do you call someone born at the literal turn of the century?) Hyunjin’s inclined to disagree, if not for ideological reasons then purely so that he can one day make some of that sweet, sweet, Silicon Valley dough. But lately he’s considering changing his mind, now that he’s found out courtesy of the school confessions Twitter account that—

“Seungmin’s asking someone to prom!”

Jisung stares back at him blankly, burger grease stain at the corner of his mouth. Hyunjin wrinkles his noise and slides a napkin over.

“Seriously?” Jisung squints, but thankfully takes the napkin. “Are you sure you didn’t read the wrong name or something?”

Hyunjin pulls out his phone in response.

> **confessions (@jyphsconfess)**
> 
> _after stuco yesterday i overheard seungmin kim telling felix lee that he wants to go to prom with someone this year… any bets as to who?_

“Woooow,” Jisung concludes.

“I know.” Hyunjin slumps down onto the table and catches a glimpse of his reflection from his phone screen. The McDonald's lighting really isn’t doing him any favors. “Seungmin? Really?”

It’s not that there’s anything wrong with Seungmin asking someone to prom, it’s just—Seungmin? Student council president for three years in a row Seungmin? Cried when he scratched his parent’s car backing out of the driveway Seungmin? Taught Hyunjin how to tie his shoes in kindergarten and subsequently became his best friend Seungmin? Would rather spend his evenings meticulously planning out future bullet journal spreads than attend any sort of school function Seungmin? Has been ditching prom with Hyunjin for the past three years Seungmin? That Seungmin?

Jisung tilts his head to the side. “I wonder who it is.”

“Well,” Hyunjin declares. “Wonder no more. I’m,” he taps his chin for emphasis, “going to get to the bottom of this.”

His only real lead right now is Felix, so he goes through the trouble of looking up his schedule in the online directory and corners him as he comes out of AP Bio.

“Ah!” Felix waves his textbook around threateningly. “Don’t do that man!”

“Sorry,” Hyunjin tosses over his shoulder as he drags Felix into an empty classroom. They’ve both got this period free, so Felix has no excuse to leave.

“What are you doing?”

Hyunjin crosses his arms. If he remembers correctly, Felix is on dance team with Yeji _and_ was the one who covered her car in post-its last year during prank week, which Hyunjin only knows because Yeji had come home ranting about some asshole ginger. (Not that he complained—he got the car that week, _without_ needing to have been born twelve minutes earlier. Suck it, Yeji). Surely that’s significant enough ammo against him.

“Do you know who Seungmin wants to go to prom with?”

Felix raises an eyebrow at him. “Shouldn’t you be asking him? Aren’t you guys best friends?”

“Well, yeah.” Hyunjin scrunches his face up in concentration. “But we don’t really talk about this kind of stuff.” The last time they’d tried, it’d been Hyunjin cautiously asking Seungmin why he didn’t date around. Seungmin had replied with some sort of nonanswer and redirected the conversation to how ruthlessly Tzuyu Chou had turned Hyunjin down that day. So yeah. They don’t talk about this kind of stuff.

Felix shrugs. “Seungmin said I couldn’t tell you.”

“But you know?”

“Yeah.” Felix winks and pushes himself off of the desk. “I’m sure you’ll find out sooner or later!”

**from: hyunjin  
** to: jisung  
he can’t tell me???????  
why not?

 **from: jisung  
** to: hyunjin  
how on earth am i supposed to know?  
i don’t think seungmin even knows my name

 **from: hyunjin  
** to: jisung  
nah he does

 **from: jisung  
** to: hyunjin  
and ur so sure bc…?

 **from: hyunjin  
** to: jisung  
remember the egg baby project?

 **from: jisung  
** to: hyunjin  
.

 **from: hyunjin  
** to: jisung  
<333

 **from: jisung  
** to: hyunjin  
we don’t talk abt that.

“Who are you texting?” Yeji leans over to sneak a peek at his phone.

Hyunjin rolls his eyes and locks it, sitting up in the passenger seat. “It’s just Jisung.”

“Ugh.” Yeji snorts in response. 

“What?”

“I can’t look at him the same way again after the egg baby project last year.”

Hyunjin grins. “We were just talking about that.”

“Hmmm.”

“Say, do you know who Seungmin’s asking to prom?”

Yeji shoots him a look when they’re at a stop sign. “Why would I know?”

“I don’t know.” Hyunjin goes back to slumping in his seat. “It was worth a shot.”

“Well I’ve got nothing for you.” Yeji drums her hands on the steering wheel. There’s a spark in her eyes. “But Yuna might.”

Out of all of Yeji’s friends, Yuna scares him the most. Sure, she might permanently have a smile attached to her face, but Hyunjin’s also seen her absolutely destroy Jeongin in hockey. He has no qualms about what she could do to him.

“Hi Hyunjin,” she says as she skips up to him during lunch. “Yeji said you wanted to see me?”

Jisung eyes the two of them warily. “Is there something going on here that I don’t know about?”

“No!” Hyunjin chokes out. God, _no_. Unlike Felix, he knows better than to mess with any of Yeji’s friends.

“Then I guess I’ll be going,” Yuna shrugs, and she’s already picking up her tote bag and making to leave when Hyunjin grabs her wrist.

“Wait,” he pleads. “Can we talk later?”

“Okay,” Yuna says, and smiles at him, teeth and all.

Hyunjin shudders. Creepy.

“Are you sure there’s nothing happening between you two?”

“Jisung, _no_.” 

“Just checking!”

**from: seungmin  
** to: hyunjin  
hey im at bbt, where r u?

“Oh no,” Hyunjin groans, picking himself up from where he’s slouched on the gym bleachers.

Yuna pulls her hair out of its ponytail. “What’s wrong?”

“Look.” He gestures impatiently at his phone. “What do I do? What do I say?”

Yuna makes a face at him, which, in Hyunjin’s opinion, she has no right to do, since she’s a) a sophomore, b) totally unaware of how horrible Hyunjin is at lying, and c) still refusing to tell Hyunjin who Seungmin’s going to ask to prom.

“Just tell him that you’re with me?”

“No way,” Hyunjin snorts. “I don’t want him to get the wrong idea.”

“Oh my god, not like that.” Yuna rolls her eyes and snatches the phone from Hyunjin’s hands. 

“Hey!”

“I’m helping you,” she says, then turns around to pack up her duffel bag. Hyunjin stares down at his phone, which now pings with a new text.

 **from: hyunjin  
** to: seungmin  
im picking up yuna as a favor to yeji, sorry!

 **from: seungmin  
** to: hyunjin  
ahh  
catch u tomorrow then?  
<3

“Oh my god, he used a heart emoji,” Hyunjin mutters to himself. When he looks up, Yuna’s giving him another look. 

See, this is why she’s still scary to him.

“I’m going to ignore that,” she says delicately, and zips her bag up. “Look, I can’t tell you who he’s going to prom with either.”

Hyunjin drops his phone in disbelief. The whole point of sitting through her hockey practice was so that he could _finally_ find out, what the hell?

“But,” she continues, holding up a finger, “I know that it’s a boy.”

There’s only one lie that Hyunjin has ever gotten away with in his life. It’s nothing dramatic—nothing like how Chris Bang survived the entirety of high school without anyone finding his old SoundCloud tracks, or how Yeji once managed to convince him that Minho Lee had the serious hots for him and Hyunjin had tried to gently let him down only to find out that this was an elaborate ruse orchestrated by Woojin Kim to get him to buy drugs from Minho, or how Changbin Seo apparently was once scouted by a talent agency—but just, this:

“Hyunjin,” Seungmin starts, voice shrouded by the 2am light of the moon. They’re curled up on sleeping bags in Seungmin’s backyard, willing to brave the mosquitoes for a night in exchange for not waking up covered in sweat. “Do you like me?”

Hyunjin could answer that question in many ways.

_Yes, because you’re the first friend I made here, yes, because the way you laugh flips my stomach upside down and knocks my knees together, yes, because you’re so smart and you’ve never made fun of me for being in the standard classes instead of with you in the advanced ones, yes, because—I just do. Do you like me, too?_

“No,” he settles on finally, but Seungmin’s already asleep.

“So,” Jisung grins, smile still stained with burger grease. “Have you made any progress?”

“Hmmph.”

Jisung pats his back consolingly. “Tough luck.”

It’s not for lack of trying—Hyunjin’s tried, and tried, and tried, and tried. He’s asked everyone he knows—he’s even put out a query onto the alumni pages, to which Nayeon Im had simply responded with _you’re so cute hyunjinnie_ and Jinyoung Park had left a rather blunt _sorry, i’m going to have to report this post for lack of subject relevance._

But now prom’s only a week away and with each day that comes his Snapchat story is littered with yet another short, ten second promposal that leaves him torn between wanting to bleach his eyes out of self-preservation or wondering why that couldn’t be him and Seungmin.

“Congrats on Ryujin saying yes by the way,” he tells Jisung. “I really didn’t think it’d happen.”

“You and me both.” Jisung lifts his soda up and bumps it against Hyunjin’s. “A toast? To your own quest?”

“Okay,” he shrugs.

“To Seungmin, and prom, and childhood crushes, and people who never tell their best friends anything, and—”

“That’s enough,” Hyunjin laughs, lifting his own soda up in the air. “To… all of that.”

These days, Seungmin’s been so busy with student council that Hyunjin only gets to see him in brief flashes in the hallways, or during the occasional free period that they share together. Even then, they usually default to their own homework after a couple of minutes of conversation. Senior spring is a _total_ scam.

Which is why he’s surprised when, on a Saturday morning, Seungmin knocks on his door and breathes out, “Hi, can we talk?”

Hyunjin peeks behind him, and notes his own old bike helmet swinging from Seungmin’s handlebars. Cute.

“Sure,” he says, waving a hand. “Yeji’s got Chaeryeong over, so—”

“Then let’s stay out here instead,” Seungmin cuts in, words rushed, and it’s only then that Hyunjin notices the shaky hands, the flush climbing up the back of his neck, the startled eyes.

“Okay?” Hyunjin frowns and closes the front door behind him.

“Hyunjin,” Seungmin starts, eyes cast downwards. “Will you go to prom with me?”

Hyunjin blinks, once, twice. _Oh._

So all along it’s been him.

He squeezes his eyes shut. “Are you serious?”

Seungmin raises his head to look at him, and there’s a tiny smile pulling at the corner of his mouth, just enough to make butterflies flutter to life in Hyunjin’s stomach.

“Yeah,” Seungmin breathes, “I’m serious.”

“Okay,” Hyunjin says, “okay. I’ll go with you.”

Above them, the sun breaks across the sky so brightly that Hyunjin almost misses Seungmin’s answering smile. He’s even worse of a liar than he thought he was. But somehow, that’s okay with him.

**Author's Note:**

> [twitter](https://twitter.com/mythsick) / [cc](https://curiouscat.me/elsewhere)


End file.
